Rwandan President Paul Kagame will Monday make his first official visit to France since the 1994 genocide, to rebuild relations damaged by Kigali’s accusation of French complicity in the massacres. The two-day visit mirrors that of Nicolas Sarkozy in February 2010 to Kigali, the first by a French head of state since the Rwandan genocide. Paris and Kigali resumed diplomatic relations in 2009 after they broke down in 2006 due to a judicial investigation in France on events that marked the beginning of the genocide.
During his visit to Kigali, Sarkozy acknowledged “a form of blindness” in Paris for not having “seen the size of the genocidal” Hutu regime in Rwanda at the time, remarks welcomed by Kagame.